Tag: Fantasy

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

After looking at the power of stories in Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett turns to some of the greatest stories ever told: religions, and, somewhat more incidentally, philosophy. Small Gods, the thirteenth Discworld novel, takes place in and around Omnia, an austere land on the edge of a great desert. The church of the Great God …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/08/small-gods-by-terry-pratchett/

Shadows Of Self by Brandon Sanderson

This guy. Seriously, Brandon Sanderson is the kind of author all professional writers should aspire to be. You’d think that the quality of his output would suffer given the discipline he adheres to in producing it, but no: all his books are intelligent, creative, wildly entertaining and filled with his distinctive sense of humanity and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/01/08/shadows-of-self-by-brandon-sanderson/

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has observed that while plot is a literary convention, story is a force of nature. In Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett explores some of the things that can happen when these forces of nature latch on to people in his most unnatural of settings. People think that stories are shaped by people. In …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/27/witches-abroad-by-terry-pratchett/

New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear

There isn’t a zeppelin on the cover to let readers know this is an alternate history, but by way of making up for it, Elizabeth Bear sets the book’s first story on board hydrogen-filled German airship. The Hans Glücker is on its way from Calais to the jewel of British North America, the eponymous New …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/21/new-amsterdam-by-elizabeth-bear/

Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal

Of Noble Family is the fifth book of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist History series. The series crosses Regency romances with alternate (but not terribly alternate) history and a dash of domestic magic. The series follows Sir David Vincent and his wife Jane, accomplished glamourists; that is, practitioners of the arts of magical illusion known in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/09/of-noble-family-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

The Well-Favored Man by Elizabeth Willey

A friend whose taste I respect recommended The Well-Favored Man to me, and, while I didn’t bounce off of it, I didn’t respond with quite the enthusiasm we both thought I might. She zipped right through it and has, I think, re-read it again in the meantime, while I dawdled the weeks away, and read …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/08/the-well-favored-man-by-elizabeth-willey/

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

They seem such slight things, the Discworld books. Mostly slender paperbacks with the unmistakable art on their covers and the absurd premises piled on one another (it’s turtles all the way down), usually stacked up in the first few pages. Suddenly it’s a couple hundred pages later, there has been laughter, there has been at …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/07/reaper-man-by-terry-pratchett/

TRUST by Jodi Baker

  Series: Between Lions (Book 1) Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: BookBaby (October 3, 2015) Language: English ISBN-10: 0986431710 ISBN-13: 978-0986431715 Publisher’s Description TRUST is a young adult, mythological, urban fantasy thrill ride about the darkly fantastical, supernatural Museion that has secretly protected humanity’s greatest treasures for millennia, and Anna, the sixteen-year-old New York girl who …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/21/trust-by-jodi-baker/

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

It should have been painfully obvious to me from the blurb that this would involve retellings of fairy tales, but I did not realize till I was well into the Beauty And The Beast tale and then ZOMG, THIS IS MY JAM!!! Andrzej Sapkowski has written a terrific fantasy novel with a sympathetic hero, and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/11/the-last-wish-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

The Once And Future King by T. H. White

When I first started reading this, I was so completely taken aback by the Boys’ Own, jolly-good, public school vibe of the writing that I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was going to like it. The first part was, thus, slow-going for me, used as I was to depictions of Arthurian romance that were a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/08/the-once-and-future-king-by-t-h-white/